Picking Up Colors
by Punzie the Platypus
Summary: The day Evelyn leaves her ex-husband, she spends a moment with her sleeping young son before leaving that Abnegation house forever.


_**Soli Deo gloria**_

**DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Divergent. **

**I'm typing out the plan for where Eliminating Threats is going, and came upon this idea, a snapshot of a few single moments in time in a quiet, unassuming Abnegation neighborhood . . .**

Evelyn finished forcing a grey skirt into her small bag and pulled it shut. She strung it over her shoulder and took one last look at her bedroom. An Abnegation bedroom: the walls white, the floor a grey carpet. The dressers were plain, unadorned, doing nothing more than functioning for a purpose. Everything in Abnegation had to work for a purpose, or else it was considered selfish, unnecessary, and unwanted.

Marcus didn't want a frivolous household. Evelyn sighed and shook her head. He tried so hard in his own, strange cruel way to be a model Abnegation. And in the process, he beat his wife and traumatized his young son and ruined his marriage. And frankly, Evelyn was glad to escape him.

She turned off the one white light bulb and shuddered as she turned away from the bed, which wasn't a source of warm memories for her. She'd shared a bed with a monster. That very thought kept her awake at night, besides the general shiver of suspicion he gave her. She couldn't have a calm moment with him in his house. His presence preyed on her nerves, causing her to be jittery and shake so much that he yelled at her for doing so.

Evelyn, her face drawn, her lips pressed into a thin line, opened the door and slammed it shut for the last time.

She stopped outside the one occupied bedroom in her house. She swallowed and opened it gently, and saw the soft sun play against her son's drawn face. Even in sleep, Tobias curled in on himself. He was thin, nine-years-old, with thick, dark hair, his body tangled with his one grey blanket.

Evelyn squatted next to him, her thin bronze fingers gently stroking his soft cheek. Her Tobias, her son, the only other person in the whole city who knew of the terrible secret they were forced to keep behind closed doors. She'd tried to stop Marcus from whipping him two days ago, when Tobias had gotten a C in Art at school. Along with the bad grade, Marcus was angry with Tobias for being in such an indulgent, selfish class. An Amity class, not an Abnegation one. Then Evelyn was hit across the face for enrolling him in a class like that. "What will people think of us if they know he isn't pertaining to his faction, Evelyn?"

It was because of her Tobias's shoulders hurt now. Her fingers reached out, almost to touch the bandages she had put there herself. But Evelyn swallowed and stood up instead. If she was going to leave Tobias here with his father, to be Abnegation, unashamed by her actions, then she'd have to stop being attached to him. Had to stop loving him.

Hopefully her leaving would cause Marcus to stop hurting Tobias. Marcus was mainly against her, and with her gone, Tobias's life would be better. That was the only thought that forced Evelyn from her son's bedside.

Though, at the door, she felt the weak tears, and instantly turned and bestowed one last present to her son: a soft, affectionate kiss on his rough cheek, saying all she wanted to say to him but couldn't.

No. She couldn't take him to be homeless, to be part of the rejected of their society. This was the best chance he had. If he didn't stay in Abnegation when he was sixteen, she could only hope that he chose the best faction for himself.

Evelyn's step on her stairs was soft from years of trying to not instigate Marcus's wrath. The light from the sun poured in from a window on her. It was barely six in the morning; her 'death' was going to be in an half hour.

Marcus looked up from papers on his desk. He stood up, and Evelyn looked at her ex-husband for one last time. Graying at the temples, stout and robed in thick grey. Cold, silvery eyes. He used to be handsome, for an Abnegation. Maybe that was the only reason he had caught Evelyn's eye; maybe now he was ugly because his features were washed away from age; or maybe because his true nature had come out, showing how truly ugly he was.

"Take care of him," Evelyn ordered. She kept the emotion of tears from her voice; she had appeared too weak in front of this man too many times. Now she was leaving with dignity and her head held high. "He's young. And he will feel grief."

"Yes. He will. I will take care of him," Marcus said, keeping his own voice controlled. He didn't yell or hold a note of anger in his voice. He tried to appear trustworthy for the fate and future of their son.

Evelyn couldn't keep the hatred from her glare. "Don't you dare hurt him," she admonished harshly. "And don't break him." She almost broke beneath her husband's hand. Evelyn didn't want the same effect on her young son.

Marcus stared at her as she gazed about their plain, barren home. She pressed one thin hand against the door frame, and pushed herself away, opening the front door for the last time, to meet a bath of white light that would carry her away from here: her home.

No. Marcus Eaton's home was no home of hers, not with the monster behind the walls, her scared son hiding in the shadows of a closet, the pain seared into her back, her face, her shoulders. No more. Evelyn Johnson welcomed the cold, dirty, homeless life of the factionless, the only home she could have now.

**This family is so broken it's not even funny. *Glares* I BLAME MARCUS. **

**God bless you!**


End file.
